Netflix: No Recent Changes to VPN Policy

News emerged this week that Netflix is cracking down on movie and TV buffs who use VPN services to bypass content restrictions for their geographical locations.

According to Torrentfreak, some VPN providers say Netflix is messing with customers' connections. One noted that it received reports from a number of users around mid-December regarding issues they were having connecting to Netflix while on a VPN.

"This is a brand new development. A few weeks ago we received the first report from a handful of clients that Netflix blocked access due to VPN or proxy usage. This is the very first time I've ever heard Netflix displaying this type of error message to a VPN user," TorGuard's Ben Van der Pelt told TorrentFreak.

Netflix, however, said this is nothing new. "We use industry standard methods to block VPNs. Always have and always will," a Netflix spokesman said, adding that Netflix has done nothing new recently.

Users bypassing regional Netflix services for another country's Netflix service through the use of a VPN are invariably skirting past whatever licensing arrangements the studios have put into place with regional distributors.

Netflix does "not closely monitor where some of their subscribers are registering from and don't take steps to counter circumvention websites that allow people in, for example, Australia, to sign up to the US or the UK Netflix service and subscribe illegally (Netflix don't as of now have a service in Australia, nor do they have Australian rights for our content)," Sony Pictures Television executive Steve Mosko said in November of 2013, according to Ars Technica.

Mosko said at the time that it asked Netflix to block this activity because it "is in effect another form of piracyone semi-sanctioned by Netflix, since they are getting paid by subscribers in territories where Netflix does not have the rights to sell our content," Ars reported.

In November, Sandvine reported that Netflix appeared as a top 10 app in Australia during the second half of the year, even though it has not yet launched in the country. Residents are likely using location-spoofing services to tap into Netflix down under, but they won't have to do that too much longer. Netflix arrives in Australia and New Zealand in March.

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint as an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in...
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